KIRKUS REVIEW

Augustson
refers to the “New Axial Age” in the subtitle of his heavily detailed,
impressive debut. His explanation of the term looks back to German philosopher
Karl Jaspers’ idea of a first Axial Age, which occurred around 500 B.C. and
featured the simultaneous flowering of Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Buddhism,
and the Socratic origins of Platonism. Augustson also refers to the idea of a “centurial
rhythm,” which led to a communal but uncoordinated upsurge of advancement for
all of these philosophies. In five densely packed chapters, the author makes a
case for a new age in the future that will be borne out of four powerful
cultural movements: Confucian China, Hindu Islam, the Muslim Middle East, and
the Christian West. The book looks at history in its broadest scope, which
requires it to cover the fundamentals of historiography in its earliest
chapters. Its main point is that the sporadic appearance of republics over the
last two centuries has laid the groundwork for a transformation of human
civilization. The sections in which Augustson makes predictions about the future
of his new Axial Age are often intriguing. However, prognostication is the
Achilles’ heel of the historian’s art, and readers will doubtless strongly contest
some statements. For example, the author writes that “[t]he only certain
transformative event thus far in the twenty-first century—Al Qaeda’s attack on
the World Trade Center Towers in Manhattan—was enormously evident and
consistent with the nine-century pattern”—a claim that future historians may
challenge. Augustson also takes issue with the concept of “the end of history,” instead
seeing “a path to new adventures to which currently we lack the strength to
walk”; the implicit pessimism of that stance arises, in part, out of the
author’s assertion that the West may lose a coming epic confrontation with the
Islamic world. Like the rest of his book, it’s controversial but endlessly
thought-provoking.

A
wide-ranging, comprehensive study of the meta-history of human civilization.

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